Once upon a time
by Serpentina
Summary: Propelled by dreams of tortures and loss, Severus Snape discovers that to save his soul, he must right an age-old wrong. A Snape/Hermione story.


**¥** I don't own the idea of the HP story, nor its characters. I just adopted them from J.K. Rowling to transport them into a universe of my own. 

**Once upon a time**

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**_Chapter 1_**                  -I can't find it- 

Pale moonlight filled the deserted corridors of Hogwarts. 

It was half an hour past midnight and all students were supposed to be asleep, but Severus Snape was sure that he heard some noise. The rushed sound of ragged breathing and some scraping on the floor had reached his ears as he headed past a winding in the corridor close to the Ravenclaw quarters. The noise seemed to have come from the fourth corridor at the east part of the castle, an ancient, deserted quarter of the school that had been shut down for years. 

It was dark in here. The air was stale and smelled of old dust and the years-long absence of sunlight. The window-shutters were closed and the thick layer of dust that covered the floor, muffled his every step. The several statues were covered by white sheets to save them from the teeth of time. No torches were lit in this part of the castle and several cobwebs hung from the bare iron sconces. But the noise had definitely come from up here. 

Carefully, not to catch the intruder's attention, he approached the source of the noise and gazed up the long flight of steps into the next corridor. He couldn't see anyone. His own shadow flickered across the smooth sandstone walls, strangely elongated by the dim light of his wand. He had now reached the head of the stairs. Hesitatingly, he stopped, tilted his head aside and listened carefully. The noise was still there. Very faint, but close by now. It was the ragged, muffled sound of someone panting. With a low voice he extinguished the light of his wand. "Nox –" 

Everything was dipped in darkness once again. The pale moonlight that peered in through the tightly closed window-shutters was the only light to cut through the blackness around, projecting an odd, riffled pattern of light and shadows to the dusty wooden-floor. There it was again – a scraping noise in a nook by the windows and another – half stifled breathing. 

He sneered, expecting to find a pair of students, who had sneaked up into this dark, deserted place to spend some private time on their own. An irrational rage filled him at that idea. He was driven by nothing than the desperate urge to give them, whoever they were, a harsh lecture and a detention, for wandering around the school at night. His blood boiled with desperate nonrational fury. 

"Lumos!" he ignited his wand again. Slowly he traced the dim ray of light along the floor, the expression on his face sour, spiteful and bitter. Someone was shrinking back into the shadows, hiding in that narrow, dark nook near the windows. 

Triumphantly Snape dashed forward – rasping: "Who's there? What do you think you're doing!?" 

His move was answered by horrified gasping and muffled sobbing as if a fist was stuffed into someone's mouth. That wasn't what he had expected. He fixed the light of his wand at the sobbing heap in the nook that was – Her… 

She lifted her tearstained face up at him, blinking against the sudden brightness. Dust and cobwebs covered the untamed masses of her hair and left smeared traces on her face. She was a mess. 

"P-professor? I –I aww, I – I –" 

"Miss Granger?!" he asked, bewildered. His first impulse was to tell her off – to rasp at her for wandering around the school at night, but when his gaze fell onto her bare feet and the dusty, sweat drenched, previously white night-gown, that she clenched to her trembling body, he turned worried instead. 

After he made sure she wasn't physically harmed, he commanded her to follow him towards his office. But when he led her down the large flight of stairs, she almost fell and he had to grab her upper arm for support. 

He briefly considered leading her towards the infirmary, but thought the better of it. Whatever this was about, he wanted to know what she had been doing up there first. 

¥ 

Down at his study, he led the disturbed, trembling girl towards one of the large, high-backed armchairs and re-lit the still gleaming ashes in the magnificent fireplace with a flip of his wand. Only then he turned to face her again. She was deathly pale – almost like a ghost, and she was still shaking violently, despite the woollen blanket he had placed around her shoulders. 

"What is it? Won't you tell me?" he requested with an almost kind note in his voice. 

She opened her mouth in an attempt to speak, but her teeth were chattering so violently, he couldn't really understand a thing. Maybe it had been wrong not to take her to the infirmary first. 

"How long had you been up there, anyway?" he asked with a trace of concern. 

"I –I don't know –" 

When again she started crying, burying her face in her hands, he felt the strong urge to comfort her in some way. "Now, now –" he muttered, "it surely couldn't be that bad, could it?" 

"Oh yes, Professor, it is," she sobbed. "I'm having these horrible dreams – nightmares, to be precise and – I –" 

His head snapped up in alarm. "What nightmares?" he asked rather sharply, but not unkindly. 

She frantically rubbed her tearstained face in her hands. "I'm not sure if I can tell you –" she whispered hesitatingly and bit her lip. She stared down at her nervously wrestling hands for quite a while and he almost didn't expect her to answer his question at all anymore, when suddenly she drew in a deep breath and started to speak again. 

"They – are horrible and they – just won't go away, no matter what I try. There's a castle – but it's not Hogwarts. And a crowd of people screaming and shouting. I don't understand what they yell, but they are very excited and I'm afraid, I'm so afraid. I try to flee, but –" she drew in another breath and continued, her voice unsteady, rushed and panic-stricken – "I can't get away. My hands are tied up somewhere behind my back and though I struggle as much as I please, I can't get free. I'm tied to some kind of – pole. My feet are sinking into a heap of twigs or something. They are scratching my legs, but I can't see them. I can't see anything. There's thick black smoke everywhere closing me in and I – I try to scream, but I can hardly even breathe. I gag and cough, but there never seems to be enough fresh air. Then – then there is pain – there's so much – pain. It feels like my skin and flesh are splitting apart and are scaled from my bones. I try to scream, but no sound escapes my throat. Then I get dizzy. There's blackness in front of my eyes, it holds promises of cool– and quietness and I reach out for it. I try to step forward, my knees give way, but the pole is holding me upright. Then suddenly the knot around my wrists gives way. My arms are gliding past my sides and I fall forward. Into the coolness, the blackness, the _nothing_ – The last thing I sense is the feeling of terrible loss and betrayal. I know I have to seek it, _but I can't find it_ – And then I awake somewhere up here in the darkness. I don't know what to do anymore."  

She lifted her face out of her hands to look at him out of frightened, bloodshot eyes. "Do you think I'm losing my mind?" she whispered desperately. 

Severus Snape tried his best to hide the goose flesh that had shown on his arms at her words and stared at the young, disturbed woman, who was curled up into a heap in the armchair in front of him, in shock. This couldn't mean what he thought it meant, could it?

Disbelief and excitement captured his senses. There were several urgent questions welling up inside him, but in her current condition, she wasn't prepared for a conversation like this. She was distracted, frightened and utterly exhausted. He needed to take care of the most important matters first. With a grave sigh he rose from his seat and walked towards her. 

**A/N: **What do you think it means? And do you like it? 

Thanks to **SilentG** for beta-reading!

Serpentina


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